US School caught syping on students thru laptop webcams

RATM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-on-students-webcams

Gas story this, especially the question that still remains- what was the student doing in front of his laptop that was described as 'improper behaviour'.

A school district in Pennsylvania spied on students through web cameras installed on laptops provided by the district, according to a class action lawsuit filed this week.

Lower Merion school district, in a well-heeled suburb of Philadelphia, provided roughly 2,300 high school students with Mac laptops last autumn in what its superintendent, Christopher McGinley, described as an effort to establish a "mobile, 21st-century learning environment".

The programme was funded with $720,000 (£468,000) in state grants and other sources. The teens were forbidden from installing video games and other software, and were barred from "commercial, illegal, unethical and inappropriate" use.

But unbeknown to the students, the district retained remote control of the built-in webcams installed on the computers - and used them to capture images of the students, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.

The ruse was revealed when Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton high school, was hauled into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko's office, shown a photograph taken by a webcam on the laptop in his home and disciplined for "improper behaviour".

According to Robbins, Matsko said the school had retained the ability to activate the laptop webcams remotely, at any time.

Backed by his parents, Robbins filed a lawsuit on behalf of all students provided with laptops by the school.

The suit claims a violation of the privacy and civil rights of the students and their families and accuses officials of violating electronic communications laws by spying on them through "indiscriminate use of an ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop".

It claims that since the laptops were used by the students, friends and family members at home, the captured webcam images consist of the teens and their parents in "compromising or embarrassing positions, including ... in various states of undress".

A school district spokesman, Douglas Young, did not return a call seeking comment, but told the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper the district was investigating.

"We're taking it very seriously," he said.

He told the newspaper that the webcams included a security feature allowing them to photograph the operator and the screen if the computer was lost or stolen. He said the feature had been deactivated yesterday.

Witold J Walczak, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press that like police, state school officials are barred from entering the home electronically or physically without a warrant.

Robbins and his family have declined to discuss what behaviour led to his punishment.

TwoShedsJackson

Jerking off is the first assumption.

Overheal

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055832907